In the United States, fear and denigration of immigrants was present throughout the 19th century. Whether the country could adequately assimilate such a large number of persons was a predominant concern. The organism metaphor was a particularly apt means of describing the presumed adverse impact of immigrants on the nation. The central feature of the organism metaphor is that the social community is viewed as analogous to a physical body. Just as the integrity of our own bodies may be threatened by contaminating external elements, so too is the social body vulnerable to corruption by invading sub-groups.

The denigration of marginalized groups is frequently supported through the widespread employment of metaphors that present a pejorative image of the group in question. The organism metaphor, wherein the target group is portrayed as a threat to the integrity of the social body, is a particularly important metaphoric theme in the advancement of social injustice.

Beneath the Nazi façade of racial supermen and cultural glory, another ideology developed, one obsessed with death, ruin and martyrdom which helped bring Hitler’s Germany to its apex, and then to its ultimate climactic end.